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The Supreme Court has recently issued a notice to Fortis Hospital in a plea by a child, Devarsh Jain, seeking compensation for an alleged brain injury at the time of his birth in 2017. The child approached the apex court through his mother against the National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission (NCDRC), which refused orders for compensation.
The bench of justices Sanjay Kumar and Alok Aradhe issued notice to Fortis Hospital and other respondents. The matter has been listed for further hearing on December 8, 2025. The appeal has been filed against the order dated March 17, 2025, passed by the NCDRC dismissing the original complaint of the appellants in limine. Senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy, along with Advocate Rajiv Ranjan Dwivedi, appeared for the appellant Devarsh Jain, an 8-year-old child who is in a vegetative state. The appeal stated that the appellant, Devarsh Jain, suffered severe brain damage at the hands of two paediatricians employed by the super-speciality NABH-certified Fortis Hospital at Shalimar Bagh, New Delhi. It is alleged that despite being unqualified professionals, both these doctors have been appointed to senior-most positions in the hospital, especially to admit and treat newborn babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It is further stated that both doctors brutally mishandled the appellant's child, causing irreversible brain damage. As a result, the child has been reduced to a permanent vegetative state. The damage culminated in Cerebral Palsy and epilepsy, condemning him to a life of endless seizures, complete muteness, and severe visual impairment. "He now lies permanently confined to a cot-silent, motionless, and unresponsive. His existence has been reduced to a living tragedy, inflicted solely by the reckless hands of those as doctors," the plea said. The child had filed a complaint under Section 35(1)(c) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, before NCDRC, on behalf of and for the benefit of numerous other patients who had faced similar misrepresentation at the hands of the respondents. It is also stated that NCDRC dismissed the complaint while completely misconstruing the basic facts of the complaint. "The Commission erroneously proceeded to treat the complaint as a Public Interest Litigation against the entire medical industry. It further erred in observing that the respondent doctors, who caused brain damage to the appellant child, were merely cited as illustrations," the plea said. In a statement from Fortis Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, it stated that it has not yet been served with any notice from the Supreme Court of India in this matter. "We retain all our rights to review the allegations and will issue a formal response in accordance with the law once the relevant documents and legal filings are received," it said. (ANI)
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